


An Empty Battlefield

by Anna__S



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 20:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1831330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna__S/pseuds/Anna__S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You wear your strength like a shield</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Empty Battlefield

**Author's Note:**

> AU post Season One. Originally written in 2005.

You go to the funeral and the speeches and prayers are just white noise. You watch his sister, waiting for false hysterics. But she is subdued and pale, even under the flashing camera lights.

You wear your strength like a shield. Nobody talks to you, and you don’t know if it’s because they fear you or blame you.

Someone slips their hand into yours and somehow, before you look up, you know it will be Duncan. His hands are larger and warmer than you remember.

He nods his head towards the door, and you follow him out, sliding behind the paparazzi into the parking lot.

“I think there are better ways to remember Logan than this,” he says.

“Like what?” you ask.

“Like anything,” he says, as he opens the passenger door of his car.

You let him place you inside, like a doll. You think: all it took was his best friend’s death to wake him up. Who knew it would be so easy.

 

***

 

You think sometimes that Lily was lucky to die when she did. It was the end of the story and you should’ve known there was a reason nobody ever writes a sequel to fairytales. Someday, somehow somebody has to pay for the first part.

Boy meets girl. Boy dates girl. Boy thinks that the girl is his half-sister. Boy and girl sleep together. Girl sleeps with boy’s best friend. Boy’s best friend dies.

It’s not exactly the story you want to tell your grandkids. It’s not even a story you want to tell your psychiatrist.

 

***

 

Duncan brings you to the beach where you spent your Homecoming dance. He makes a pile of flat rocks and skips them against the water. When he sees you watching him, he gives you a shy smile.

Death erases a lot of things. You learn now, that betrayal is one of them.

He tells you stories from Logan’s childhood: the time they used all of his mom’s Chanel lipsticks to write messages on the walls. The time he faked blindness to get out of school. His first crush.

Duncan sounds a long way away. Like he’s whispering to you through a fog.

 _Why is this harder than Lily?_ you want to ask, but you already know the answer. Lily’s murder had a mystery to solve. There was something you could do, but you solved that mystery and it hurts all over again, like a fresh cut. Or a limb that you’re learning to do without all over again.

“Do you blame me?” you ask instead.

“No,” he says and he’s telling the truth. “Logan has been trying to die young for almost as long as I’ve known him. I know you wanted to save him.”

Her puts his arm around you, and you lean into it. It’s sexless, brotherly, and maybe it’s better that way. You two are the only ones left standing, like soldiers on an empty battlefield, wondering what happened to the war.

You were all in love with each other once, in love with life, and he’s the only one who can remember with you. You sat on this beach like this before. Except your face was pressed against his shoulder, breathing in a heady mixture of alcohol, salt and Duncan, while his fingers ran through your hair. You remember that Lilly’s face was glowing in the first moments of dawn. And Logan lay in the sand, drinking the last drops from the champagne bottle.

It all seems clearer and more real than the present.

“We should get back,” you had said. “It’s gonna be morning soon.”

“Not yet,” Lilly said as the waves washed over her bare feet. “We still have time.”

 

***

 

You relive those last few days in your head, over and over, and you don’t know what you could have done differently. Trusted him perhaps, but everything leading up to that moment had taught you otherwise.

You couldn’t save him. You only had strength enough to save one person, and you chose yourself.


End file.
